Sunday, November 23, 2008

Couldn’t happen to a nicer genre.Audiences are starting to prove they are SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER (which has lost half of it’s coveted 18-49 demographic) and the verdict is NO DEAL (down 29%). SURVIVOR EDITION 382: CATALINA is off 10% and even DANCING WITH THE FRINGE OR GERIATRIC STARS is down 9% (but at least Cloris Leachman didn’t break a hip). Across the board, reality shows are slumping. Maybe if the craze hadn’t gotten so far out of hand that there’s now an Emmy category for best Reality Show Host that wouldn’t be the case, but still – America has voted… and they want the genre off the island.

So what shows are doing well instead. Scripted shows. And more to the point –

COMEDIES.

Hold off reading sitcoms their rites. TWO AND A HALF MEN kicks ass, 30 ROCK is up 23% (even though this is far from their best year so far), HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER and BIG BANG THEORY are making dramatic gains as well. There’d be even more success stories if there were more than six comedies.

And you can sell those shows into syndication and make a handsome profit long into the future. What is NBC going to do with four seasons of THE APPRENTICE now that we all know the outcomes, the challenges are dated and musty, and half the contestants are currently serving time for insider trading?

Media analysts are quick to explain this phenomenon. There’s a glut of reality shows, people need escape from the collapsed economy, and Misty May-Treanor is not a great dancer.

But the bottom line is this: SITUATION COMEDIES are back even though they never went away.

Get going on that spec OFFICE and original pilot about USC film students trying to break into Hollywood.

Sitcoms (in some form) will still be around long after all the Bachelors and Bachelorettes have been divorced and Ryan Seacrest has come out.

Lumping game and quiz shows into the same pot as reality shows shows a lack of knowledge about game shows. Can you really compare a structured game like Password, Cash Cab, or Who Wants to be a Millionaire with crap like Fear Factor and Survivor? No.

For ten years I have been a volunteer "expert" of game shows on allexperts.com. I have received about a half dozen questions about reality shows and I am quick to point out to the people writing these questions that Dancing with the Stars is no more a game show than the Rachel Maddow show is. However I have received scores of questions about actual game shows. So I think the vast majority of the population would never mistake a quiz or game show for a show whose sole purpose is to humiliate participants by not celebrating their accomplishments like game shows do, but instead taking great pride in "voting them off" as reality shows do.

Not to get hung up in semantics but game shows are competitions. Shows like SURVIVOR and AMERICAN IDOL are also competitions. Stunts that SURVIVOR contestants are asked to perform might as well be stunts that BEAT THE CLOCK contestants have to perform.

Other specs mentioned at the seminar: 30 ROCK, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER. Surprisingly, they weren't keen on BIG BANG THEORY spec. And surprisingly, there were very few spec EARLS out there.

Hey Jimmy, is WHEEL OF FORTUNE a game show? Exactly how structured is random chance anyway? Or is the wheel rigged as many have suspected? Is there not a level of humiliation suffered by contestants when obvious puzzles are answered incorrectly? Are these people not "voted out" by their own lack of intellect? If game shows increased the intelligence of the people that watched, and if they did I'm pretty sure the core audience would just switch over to Nascar or the "Shiny Things" channel, then maybe they'd not be lumped in with "reality" shows.

I think the last "reality" show I enjoyed was season one of The Joe Schmoe Show - probably because one random guy was pretty much just handed $100,000 and at least it had the balls to let everybody know it was scripted.

It comes down to economics as usual. ABC just pulled Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, and Eli Stone because they're not getting big enough audiences to cover the production costs on these high concept shows stocked with big name stars.

So yes, it would seem like the perfect opportunity for some well-crafted sitcoms to make a strong comeback. They're cheaper to make and as you said Ken -- can have a much longer shelf life than Dancing with the Stars.

Let's just hope this means we get some innovative and creative comedies next fall and not a whole slew of junk.

If the time is indeed ripe for a sitcom comeback, there are plenty of good shows that didn't flourish when they were first aired, for one reason or another, that might make it today. Nothing against building up a new show from a spec script, but there must be a few short-lived but worthy sitcoms that might be successfully revived, as ABC hopes to do with CUPID (a show I never watched). Of course, any such attempt should involve the creator of the first version of the show, as ABC is doing.

I'm working on a script about USC film students trying to break into Hollywood when they realize the door is locked. THEN they discover that NYU film students have gotten there first and finally, some UCLA kids accidentally set off the alarm.

I haven't watched a reality show for years - I agree that competiton shows are separate. However, after the euphoria subsides, you need to address the 500 lb. whatever in the room - a pending strike AND advertisers pulling back commitments.

This is welcome news for those of us stuck working in reality TV while wishing we were on scripted. Any chance of a transition team helping us grab up those jobs on sitcoms as we begin to lose our reality jobs?

Glut of reality shows is right. TERRIBLE reality shows at that. What Lost did for scripted dramas, perhaps shows like 30 Rock can do to revive comedies again. This year there were even fewer new shows, let alone comedies.

I write fiction and the 'comedies are dead' mantra has been in force there, too. It's all vampires and suspense.

The reason for this sea change is due to a little known psycho-social phenomenon called Presicerebesis -- the result of which is that the functional intelligence of an individual is averaged with that of the president of their country.

are you seriously happy because someone else is doing badly and that's good for you? that's pathetic. you're grown ups, you need to stop looking at everyone else before you act. That Charlie Sheen might seriously suck, but at least those aren't whinning and blaming the reality shows for their crap.

About KEN LEVINE

Named one of the BEST 25 BLOGS OF 2011 by TIME Magazine. Ken Levine is an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer. In a career that has spanned over 30 years Ken has worked on MASH, CHEERS, FRASIER, THE SIMPSONS, WINGS, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, BECKER, DHARMA & GREG, and has co-created his own series including ALMOST PERFECT starring Nancy Travis. He and his partner wrote the feature VOLUNTEERS. Ken has also been the radio/TV play-by-play voice of the Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres. and has hosted Dodger Talk on the Dodger Radio Network.

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